May 2017

I have just returned from a 10 day camp-out up Exmouth way. 4 guys and myself had a ball catching mackerel, tuna, coral trout, trevally, cods, red emperor, barracuda, spangled emperor etc. and some stuff never seen before. Totally isolated, we had to take all our fuel, water, dry rations, firewood and camping gear for 7 days. No mobile coverage except a long walk up a hill in the evenings, made it even better!

I took a lot of GoPro and drone footage that I need to wade through and make a video. Will upload to YouTube and let you know the link when done.

Some nice balchin groper for Matt while on charter this month.

While Scott managed to get one of these gold-spot trevally to the boat after numerous bust-offs from these very hard pulling fish.

Matt got his dhuefish and had to release another!

5.3 Adventure

Sally Eats and family had a great day out landing a few good fish as well as a mackerel

Mystery Fish

This very red fish was landed by a charter customer this month? Not too sure what it was but guessed it correctly as a red bass. Way out of its range, usually caught as far south as Exmouth but some have been caught at the Abrolhos Islands I have been told. I put it up on http://www.redmap.org.au and was official identified as such.

Exmouth Gulf Trip

My camp-out this year was the best to date. The fishing was very very good, the weather was perfect with glass-off conditions most days. Frank, John, Wayne, David and myself spent 7 days camping on this beach. We took the 7.8m boat as a mothership and towed two dinghies as muck about vessels. We had to take all our gear including food, fuel, water, generator etc. so had to pack light, restrictions on everything except fishing tackle!

We caught fish like this and lots of coral trout: David with a coral trout, John with his best red emperor

and David with a big-eye trevally caught sight jigging with a chrome slice.

Cods and this rankin cod were taken on lures in shallow water from 3 metres out to 9 metres where this one was taken around a flock of diving birds.

There was never a shortage of surprises! John was well pleased!

Golden trevally were a common catch. Wayne got his fair share of them.

Gold-spot trevally and shark-mackerel for me were common catches and on light bream gear all the more fun.

It’s good to sit around a camp fire, have a beer and discuss the day’s events.

We released everything except a coral trout or cod for dinner at night. Just look at the weather conditions!

The bite time was quite narrow with nothing happening until the out-going tide. Then it went off until nearly the bottom of the tide. By then we were ready to get back for a break and mess around catching queenfish, yellow-fin bream, gardies, dart, mangrove jacks, moses perch, longtoms etc. from the beach in front of camp.

At night it was carnage from the beach as Frank will testify; mainly sharks and other unstoppables’ even on heavy gear. One morning Frank had to snorkel for his new rod and reel that was pulled in by something the night before. He found it snagged in coral, but without any line on the reel!

I took a lot of GoPro and drone footage that I need to wade through and make a video. Will upload to YouTube and let you know the link when done.

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club Local Comp.

20th May 2017

I was not here for the comp as I was driving up to Exmouth. Seems I missed a good comp!

Beau fished extremely well last year and got off to a very good start again this year fishing the river for a big mangrove jack and nice mulloway.

Harry’s bream and Steven got a cobia and snapper from his dinghy.

Robbie landed a small tailor on the beach.

Bite of the Month

Scott caught this big gold-spot trevally out on charter with me. We arrived at the spot and all lines went down, it was not long until everyone was getting reefed and bust off on 65lb tackle. Scott was the only one to get one of these tackle smashing brutes to the boat.

I award Bite of the Month to someone who catches the best fish of the month from one of my boats.